A prescription for good health starts with an ability to move your body. Whether you move your body at the fitness centers of Prairie Lodge or Meadowview Lodge in Sun City Huntley, or outside in your neighborhood is your choice. A combination of exercise options can offer a good variety of healthy choices.
What may complicate these choices are restrictions from COVID-19, the sidewalk repair program, and winter weather.
With the weather starting to warm, Sun City residents in Huntley can simply keep their heart pumping by going for a walk. Sun City has a vast sidewalk system winding through its neighborhoods. Walking is not only great for one’s heart but is also helpful for weight control and mental wellness from the feeling of isolation from COVID.
Seems so simple to put on a comfortable pair of shoes and then head out in your Sun City neighborhood for a brisk walk. But the story doesn’t end here because you may have already seen a picture or pictures accompanied with this story of a sidewalk square(s) that apparently needs replacing.
Sidewalk squares like this one occasionally pop up as a result of varying factors and present sometimes unseen dangers for pedestrians. The village, however, has a program in place to repair these uneven walking surfaces. (Photo by Tony Pratt/Sun Day)
What initially drew the interest of Sun Day was a recent email to the publisher from a Sun City resident. The resident wrote briefly about sidewalk problems she believed were not addressed in a February 25, 2021 story in Sun Day, “Snow Obstructions Raise Concerns Among Some Residents.” Sun Day reporter Michelle Moreno addressed snow removal on the sidewalks of Sun City. The email writer said, “Many studies have been conducted on different types of surfaces for walking and the effects on the body. All have concluded that asphalt is much easier on feet, ankles, knees, hips and backs than cement. Cement is one of the hardest surfaces on the body for any type of exercise. Seniors should definitely avoid exercising on cement,” she concluded.
The email writer was also concerned over “many folks taking a nasty fall,” on sidewalks. “Our sidewalks in Sun City are very difficult to keep level because so much of this property was built on marshes,” she said. In a Sun Day story from October 24, 2013, Dwight Esau reported on “Sun City’s wetlands: natural community contributors.” He wrote that nearly 305 of the 2,700 acres occupied by Sun City are wetlands. (All of Sun City’s wetland sites are marshes.) At the time, Esau quoted the landscape services supervisor. His job was to “oversee the management and care of wetlands in Sun City.” Esau learned in his reporting that Sun City’s homes had to be built around the wetlands.
However, the email did raise the need for additional research by Sun Day and led to gathering information from Huntley Public Works, McHenry County Department of Health, and Huntley Police.
A little perspective may set the tone properly. As many people in Illinois have done, Sun City residents follow the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) mandates of wearing a mask in public, social separation, and a period of isolation if they test positive for COVID-19. Lately, residents in Illinois are seeing an easing of restrictions and inching toward Governor J.B. Pritzker’s Phase 5, the closest we’ve come to normalcy in more than a year. With the COVID vaccines available, especially for seniors, more residents are emboldened to return to the things they were doing prior to March 2020.
While a number of residents walked outdoors in the earlier months of the pandemic, many more are joining in. To answer the email writer in part, Sun Day photographer Tony Pratt was assigned to look for sidewalk squares with dips, undulations, and mounding. He reported, “I saw a lot of areas that have already been ground down to fix previous trip hazards.” The email writer had expressed, “In the past few years, the Village of Huntley is doing a much better job of trying to improve this situation by grinding down these cracks.”
Asked whether he came across a significant number of uneven or raised sidewalk squares, Pratt noted, “It was not easy to find really bad hazard points.”
As a jumping off point from the email writer and Pratt’s eyewitness account, Sun Day will attempt to set the record straight on the status of the sidewalks and answer the question about the various options available for walking.
The most important first step is to expand on an understanding of efforts by the Village of Huntley and Sun City Board of Directors to maintain and repair sidewalks.
The first documented information from the Village of Huntley and Sun City Board of Directors is their effort on sidewalk safety issues. The Village’s Pedestrian Access Route Inspection and Repair Program in 2020 inspected 9.5 miles of sidewalks and performed 1,444 saw cuts to sidewalks on six projects in Sun City and the Northbridge subdivision. Jason Irvin, assistant director of Public Works and Engineering, pointed out, “Public works is now targeting Covington Lakes and another part of Sun City (NH 11) that includes the inspection of 16 miles of sidewalk and repair qualifying areas with a budget of more than $500,000 for both areas,” Irvin said.
While the Village of Huntley’s budget does exist for more service request areas, Sun City residents are asked to identify areas in question by filling out a sidewalk repair project form. “This form is then given to the neighborhood representative who in turn gives the information to Public Works for review,” Irvin said. All you are asked to do on your walk if you want to participate is to jot down the address of the home nearest to the sidewalk problem. Then just describe the specific problem which could possibly be an uneven sidewalk square for example. If the sidewalk problem is at an intersection, provide the intersection and a directional description. Either call your neighborhood rep or send an email.
In 2018, Public Works received 86 pages of sidewalk repair project forms with almost 700 locations to inspect. “A good portion of the areas were cosmetic in nature and did not qualify for a repair,” Irvin said. He also explained, “It’s important for residents to realize that a sidewalk that has a crack is considered cosmetic and will not qualify for repair. Only sidewalk displacements that could potentially cause someone to trip will be evaluated,” Irvin said. Cosmetic issues may qualify for the Village of Huntley Sidewalk Repair Rebate Program.
In a match between a cement sidewalk and asphalt street for walking with less stress to the knees and other parts of a person’s body, the winner (less impacts) would be the street. This is consistent with the email writer’s contention based on studies. The Walking Connection, adventurers that specialize in walking tours, say that “sidewalks made of cement have no elasticity.” In a report where The Walking Connection is quoted, the study indicates the safest on the body in descending order. The safest is pool walking, followed by treadmill, track, grass and turf, trails, sand, asphalt, and cement.
McHenry County Department of Health Nurse and Health Educator Carol Waggoner says it’s important to have good footwear for walking to lessen the impact. “Besides walking, a good fitness program for seniors will include strength training, flexibility (stretching) and balance exercises. Also avoid sitting for longer than 30 minutes. Move around throughout the day as much as you can. Find fun and rewarding ways to move and be physically active,” Waggoner said.
How good you may ask is walking for seniors?
Waggoner says walking is good for everyone.
“It can help to boost the immune system, circulatory system and also is good for our mental health,” Waggoner said. She found even more reasons for walking. “For people who have diabetes, walking and physical activity can decrease blood sugar, particularly if they do it one or two hours after a meal, when blood sugar rises,” Waggoner said.
